The Real Thing Ch. 03

It started on the day of the picnic.

Down in the valley lived a friend of Kinlay's, Derek Connolly; another painter. Connolly was a minor figure, not as respected as Kinlay but a more likeable sort, a hospitable boozer who whenever he came to dinner at the Kinlay's tended to get very drunk on Black Bush, trap Holly and me in a corner and give us reams of incoherent but well-meant advice. Holly thought he was a pain in the arse but I quite liked him. In any case, Caoimhe Kinlay's seventeenth birthday was coming up and since she was going out with the Connollys' eldest son, Connolly himself expansively announced that the great day would be celebrated with a party at his place. There would be a barbecue in his garden and we were all invited. Kinlay got very enthusiastic about the idea and made Anna buy vast stocks of alcohol and sausages and steaks, even though Connolly was almost certainly going to buy all those things himself.

Holly was impatient and contemptuous of the whole carry-on, regarding it as a pointless diversion on a day they could have been working. It was the end of August and the long, hot, stormy summer was showing no signs of cooling off. I wasn't looking forward to it much either, but Holly was so relentlessly down – miserable from the intense pressure of her relationship with Kinlay, and yet hating not to be working with him – that I tried to be the cheerful one, saying it would be a good time to relax and to cut loose for a bit. She remained silent at that, but on the morning of the party, she moaned that she had a migraine, and wrapped herself up in the sheet.

I went downstairs and broached the news that Holly wasn't coming. Kinlay's face fell for a moment, but then his good humour returned and he went back to supervising the loading-up of the car. I was to ride in Connie Kinlay's car with a couple of her friends. Just before we left I went up to our room to check on Holly.

The room was dark and I heard her breathing.

"Holly," I whispered.

"Mnh."

"We're just off. Do you want anything?"

"No." A tired whine.

There was a full water jug on her bedside table and an open packet of aspirin next to it. I tiptoed over to her and looked down at her.

She was lying on her side, her face looking bloated and shiny with sleep, a rash of pimples breaking out over her forehead and around her mouth. Her t-shirt and panties were on the floor, she must have taken them off for coolness. The sheet was clinging to her damp body. It was stuffy in the attic room with the closed curtains.

"You sure you don't need anything?" I asked. She just nodded, and her mouth swelled a little and relaxed as though she'd swallowed a belch, and her face twitched with nausea. There was a plastic laundry basin on the floor below her head in case she was sick.

"Okay," I said, and my fingers lightly brushed her bare shoulder as I turned and left her. I closed the door gently behind her. Typical, I found myself thinking, that she can pull this and spoil what might have been a good day. I didn't think she was faking it, not at all, but I knew how closely Holly guarded her ill health. I would be at the party, drinking and eating and sitting in the sun, and all the while, somewhere at the back of my mind, I would be worrying about her. And she knew it.

I went downstairs and left the house and got into Connie Kinlay's impatiently revving Citroen 2CV. We drove off.

The party was a great success. If Holly hadn't been ill, she might even have enjoyed it. There was plenty of beer, in bathtubs of ice all over the garden, and Derek Connolly stood in front of his built-in barbecue and turned out chewy, blackened sausages and tough steaks that were charred on the outside and cold and raw in the middle, but nobody gave a shit. Caoimhe Kinlay was, for once, not sullen and silent. The presence of her schoolfriends relaxed her, and she was laughing and clearly having a good time. At six-thirty her father, red in the face after numerous glasses of wine, tapped on a cowbell for silence and stood in the garden and made an eloquent speech about his beautiful daughter and his lovely wife and his wonderful family and how he wished Caoimhe all the happiness in the world. Then a cake was brought out in the shape of a large desktop computer (Caoimhe was apparently the only Kinlay who had no interest in working in the arts; apparently she was modestly talented in some way to do with computer science) and she blew out the candles, and made a quick and awkward speech of her own thanking everyone, and then her schoolfriends crept up behind her and poured beer all over her, and she screamed and ducked and everyone laughed and she called her friends a pack of bastards, but laughed it off.

I sat watching all this and tried to imagine what Holly would have been doing. She'd have been sitting next to me, drinking beer, turning down most kinds of food with a polite smile, nibbling on half a corncob or a lone sausage or a spoonful of coleslaw, occasionally making funny and cruel remarks about everybody else. Despite how much Holly was worrying me and tiring me out and pissing me off these days, I missed her. I even missed fighting with her. There had been a time when she had cared enough about me to fight me. That time had gone. She was going down her lonely path, as she had so depressively foreseen she would have to, and she just couldn't get up the energy yet to leave me. That was all.

Caoimhe Kinlay had gone into the house to wash off all the beer, and she emerged wearing a bikini, followed by a posse of her friends, also in swimming gear. There was a large pool formed by a bend in a river that ran through the Connolly garden, and the teenagers had decided to go for a swim. Quite a few of the more tipsy adults thought this a great idea, and to the teenagers' disgust, a half-dozen middle-aged bohemians were soon peeling off all their clothes and going skinnydipping in broad daylight. This had the effect of making the bad-tempered teenagers move out of sight of the pool, up the river towards a shallow waterfall.

Nessa Kinlay was standing near me, smiling at all the frolicking in the water, then she abruptly put her wine glass on the ground and pulled her t-shirt over her head.

"You coming for a swim, Sean?" she asked.

"Ah no," I said, smiling. "I don't."

"Ah, shag that for a game of soldiers," she said, sliding her skirt down her legs. "You will."
"I didn't bring my trunks," I said.

"Sure you don't fuckin' need them," she said with a smile, reaching behind her back. Nessa had adopted a slightly big-sisterly attitude to me, hearty and encouraging and friendly. I appreciated her for not flirting with me; I didn't want to get mixed up with two of Kinlay's daughters. "Do it in your skin like the rest of us."

"I only take my clothes off if I'm going to get painted," I said, grinning.

"Please yourself," she said airily. "Here, undo this feckin' thing for me, will ya?" She turned her back to me. I leaned over and unclipped her bra and she dropped it on the ground.

"You should come in though, all the same," she said, bending over as she pulled her panties down and stepped out of them, revealing a very nice arse. "Keep your pants on or whatever. Nobody'll mind."

"Okay then," I said, and quickly took off my runners and socks and t-shirt and jeans. I was wearing my faded old boxer shorts. Nessa glanced at them and laughed.

"Great kecks, Sean," she said drily. "Here. Take my hand, little servant person." She held out a hand and I took it, holding it at shoulder height, escorting her down to the muddy bank of the pool like she was a queen. Just as my bare feet touched the slimy mud and it slithered up between my toes, Nessa gave a great whoop, broke into a run for the last few feet and dived into the water.

The sudden movement of the earth caused by her running feet made me lose my balance, and I toppled backwards and landed on my arse in the mud. Nessa surfaced in the middle of the pond, puffing, brushing her wet hair out of her face, and then she saw me sitting in the mud. She burst out laughing and apologised.

I grinned back. There was nothing for it, so I slithered into the water and began to swim. The pool was quite deep and surprisingly cold, and I got out of breath pretty quickly.

I knew Nessa wouldn't want me hanging around her the whole time, so I swam about a bit on my own, while she broke into a fast crawl and joined her sisters and father and friends. Kinlay had gone in too, looking naked a bit like a sunburned, skinned lion walking on its hind legs, and he was splashing around in a modified doggy-paddle. I had thought Anna had gone in, but she hadn't; she was sitting on a tree stump sipping a glass of wine, still in her light frock.

I was an outsider here, just too old to be hanging out with the teenagers and too young to be with the middle-aged nudists. I felt a bit stupid now for keeping my shorts on. And I had nobody to swim with. After a little ineffectual floating on my back and some clumsy front crawl, I kicked for the shore and crawled out onto the mudbank, getting dirty all over again.

The mud on my back and legs and shorts hadn't washed off, and now my hands and knees and feet had a fresh coating. I wiped some of it off, then fetched my clothes and headed for the house.

I asked Connolly's wife if I could use the bathroom for a quick shower. She said of course, there were three, a small one on the ground floor, a bigger one on the first and another out by the studio. I decided to use the big one.

I found it, after a little poking around. It was a big new one, a wetroom, tiled and watertight, with a large shower at one end and a basin and toilet at the other. Light came down into the shower area through a curved glass wall that went up higher than the main part of the room. I was only slightly concerned when I noticed there was no bolt on the door. I would only be a couple of minutes, though. I piled my clothes on the toilet seat and turned on the shower. It was a new, modern system and it took no time to get it to a pleasantly tepid temperature.

I got under it and stripped off my boxers. The first priority was to wash them, then I could wring them out and it wouldn't matter if I put them on damp afterwards. The shower was noisy and it was hard to hear. I washed them with soap, getting all the mud out of them until the water dripping off them ran clear, then I tossed them onto the floor away from the drainage hole and soaped my naked body all over.

I found myself thinking about the sight of Nessa Kinlay, unselfconsciously nude as we walked down to the edge of the pool, and then Caoimhe and her teenage girlfriends, all of them packed into their brief bikinis. It was giving me a hard-on. I stood under the water, stroking my cock. I hadn't had sex since being with Anna and I was dying for a chance to come, and there's something very erotic about masturbating in somebody else's house.

I quickly began to jerk off. I was losing myself in a procession of images, Nessa in the afternoon sun, Anna silhouetted by the moonlight, Holly squirming underneath Kinlay, Caoimhe and her friends smiling at me and peeling off their swimsuits, their brown bodies glistening in the sun. I couldn't hear anything but the roar of the shower.

So I almost sprang out of my skin when I suddenly felt the heat and bulk of a man's naked body pressing against my back, and a hand was reaching around to touch my cock, and Kinlay's voice was muttering in my ear "Let me help you with that."

"Shit!" I yelped. "Oh God. I'm sorry. I didn't hear you." I started to step away from him, but his arm around my hips held me tight. He was strong.
"Don't worry about it, Sean," he said, and there was no mistake about it, he was pulling on my cock and his other hand was reaching around me and stroking my groin and my belly and chest, and I could feel his swollen penis pressing against my dripping buttocks. I had never been naked with another man before.

Oh Jesus.

Jesus Christ.

"Just don't worry about it," he murmured. "Give in to it. Let it happen."

"Please," I said desperately, "no, I don't want it, I can't do it…"

Kinlay's fingers were strong and rough and he was caressing and pulling on my cock like a master. His own was swelling between my naked buttocks, getting longer and thicker by the second. I felt dizzy and ill.

"You're so fucking beautiful, Sean," he said, nuzzling me, "you know that? The two of you are so fucking beautiful." He kissed the back of my neck with tenderness, and I moaned softly. "I've been wanting you for fucking ages. Come on, Sean. Let me in."

"Please," I gasped, feeling totally lost, and my slender body was quivering as he touched me all over, kissing my neck and ears and the side of my face.

"Let me in, Sean," he insisted, "open up to me. You know you're going to."

I heard him spit, and then I felt his fingers rubbing his spit between the crack of my tight buttocks, and I closed my eyes and gasped in a shuddering sob, trying to prepare myself. Kinlay was a lot bigger than me, and trying to stop him would be futile. He bent me forward so that I had to place my hands flat on the glass bricks, then he pulled my hips back, presenting my arse to himself.

Jesus, Jesus, I did not want to do this, I did not want him to take my arse, but I could not think of anything else. I could see no other option for myself but to give in to him. He was why I was here, I had been prepared to do anything for him. If this was what he wanted, then I had to let him take it.

He was working a fingertip inside my anus. Then he forced another fingertip into me. He had let go of my cock and I could feel that he was jerking off, making himself harder. He spat again, and then I felt the huge, thick, swollen head of his cock pressing into my tight little arsehole and I instinctively moaned "No!"

"Beg me," he urged me.

"Oh no, please…"

"Beg me!" he grated, holding my hips with one arm, pushing himself a little farther inside me with each stroke.

"Please," I gasped.

"Beg me to fuck you, you little bitch!"

"Oh…fuck me."

"Fuck you where?"

"Fuck my arse," I gasped, "fuck me in my arse, please, Jack, please…"

He grunted and I made an agonised squeal as my anus suddenly stretched open and admitted the helmet of his enormous cock. It stabbed and stung, and then suddenly it was easier, but God so humiliating, to be standing here pierced by his cock and actually imploring him to keep doing it.

"That's it, you little bitch," Kinlay muttered, heaving his unbearable length even further up into my rectum. The pressure of having a man in my anus made my cock begin to respond, and I moaned at how aroused I was getting. Now he had the goods on me, all right, now I was his bitch, just as Holly had been.

Just as Holly had been. Oh God, he was claiming me, just as he'd claimed her. The thought of that made me want to give myself to him all the more, even though I had no desire for him and no desire for this. But the desire to be used the way Holly had been used, that I did have. And that was enough to make me want him to fuck me, to take me any way he wished to.

The water streamed over us. Kinlay crammed his penis into me and almost lifted me off the floor with the force of his strokes. I moaned and twisted on the end of his cock, and when he was deep inside me he let go of himself, reached around me and grasped my own hard cock and rapidly and efficiently jerked me off, fucking me up my arse and making me want to come, sobbing, while all the time he kept up a steady muttering drone of talk, calling me a bitch and a whore and a little girl, and asking me how I liked it and did I let my so-called girlfriend do this to me, and he'd done it to her, oh several times, and she loved it even more than I did. How did I like that, that he'd arse-fucked her like he was arse-fucking me? What kind of a man did I call myself? And I wept and nodded and agreed with every word he said. The pressure of him up my arse, the friction of his hand hauling expertly on my sensitive cock, all of it was overriding me and taking me over and I shut my eyes and my mouth hung open and I felt my orgasm building in my groin and then exploding through my slight, naked body like a flood of fire. I was jerking and twitching in his grip and my head lolled back. The water battered into my face so that I had to shut my eyes and lips tightly. "MMMFFF!" I moaned as I let myself go.

I dropped my head and gasped as I came, copiously, all over the wall of the shower, and a couple of seconds after my first spurt, Kinlay was coming inside me. I felt his hot come seeping around the shaft of his cock as it pushed back and forth in my rectum and I moaned from the gut. He gasped, and pulled out of me, and my knees crumpled and I fell in a gasping heap on the floor of the shower, water washing over me.

He stood over me. When I could open my eyes, I glanced up and saw through the mist of tears and water that he was washing off his cock with the soap. When he was done, he tossed the soap down on me. I closed my eyes and whimpered. The pain in my anus was stinging and throbbing, and the pain of being dominated by him was making my throat tighten and tears well up in my eyes.

"There," I heard him say, not without tenderness. "Get yourself cleaned up, now. You're a good lad, Sean. Holly's a great girl. You're lucky to have her. That was all just oul talk, what I was saying back there. You know the score. It's just what you say to get yourself going. I really have a hell of a lot of respect for you. And her. She knows that. You should ask her. Oh yeah, and I want you both modelling now. The two of you together. We've a lot of work to do."

I lay in a foetal position, my ears ringing, my ass aching, hardly able to believe what I was hearing.

"Look at me, Sean," Kinlay said. I looked up at him, blinking as the water splashed onto my face. He was standing over me, the exultant, sated, craggy, huge-bellied alpha male, smiling down at me.

"You can look her in the face now, hah?" he said quietly, winked at me, then turned and left the bathroom.

I don't know how long I lay there. It took four or five minutes before I could stop shaking and gasping. I got myself under control. I got to my feet, and staggered over to my clothes.

My boxer shorts were sopping wet. I wrung them out and balled them up. I pulled on my jeans over my bare hips, and wrestled my socks onto my feet and did up my runners. I thrust my boxers into my pocket. Lastly I dragged my t-shirt over my wet skin and fished for my watch in my pocket and put it back on my wrist. Then I walked out of the bathroom and my knees went, and I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor of the corridor.

I knew I was in no state to go back to the party. I was drained and aching and utterly humiliated. I could hear the faint cries and laughs and the music spilling from the stereo. No fucking way could I face those people, not after what Jack had done to me.

Holly. I had to get back to Holly.

I got to my feet and stumbled down the corridor, feeling a little stronger with each step, until by the time I was down the stairs and out in the waning sun I felt reasonably able to keep up a front.

Derek Connolly loomed up in front of me, holding a plate of partially carbonised lamb chops.

"Sean," he said, "have a bite." His face was red with alcohol and the sun. I smiled weakly and took a chop. He grinned at me and moved off. I ate the chop, which was almost inedible, then I took a couple of bottles of beer from the nearest bathtub full of cold water and I found my way to the gate and the road beyond.

I have a good sense of direction. I walked and walked for a long time, my legs weak, my stomach churning, and more than once I thought I would have to stop and puke by the roadside, but I was determined not to be so fucking melodramatic. I had been down this road in the opposite direction and I knew I could find my way back.